Members of the European Parliament have voted 513 to 92 in favour of new rules that will regulate hedge funds and private equity funds on a pan-European basis for the first time.
The formal vote on Thursday follows the agreement last month between parliamentarians, European Union member states and the European Commission over the controversial legislation, which ended many months of heated debate and bruising negotiation.
The final package of rules will impose capital and disclosure requirements on managers of ??alternative investment funds? ?? such as hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital funds.
However, the regime will also deliver pan-EU marketing rights to approved fund managers within the EU and, after some years, to those outside the EU as long as certain conditions are met.
The legislation is a compromise leaving few interested parties entirely happy. Fund managers claim it will mean additional costs, while left-leaning MEPs claim the new rules do not go far enough in regulating a sector of the market which they see as risky and opaque.
